Staff members had plenty of questions when the staff Human Resources
Transformation team provided an update on its work at a Staff Advisory
Board forum on April 7.

The Staff Human Resources Office provides individual career
coaching and transitional support workshops. See schedule.

While progress has been made in the effort to consolidate 26 service
centers across campus and central Staff Human Resources into a single
organization, the team's work is not yet far enough along to be able
to provide many of the specifics the audience sought at the Stevenson
College session.

The process of deciding just how to shift employees into the new framework
will be developed during May and June, with the actual selection and
transitioning of staff occurring somewhat later, said team member Shari
Hastings, personnel/payroll manager for physical and biological sciences.
"It's possible employees may know the outcome of those staffing
decisions well in advance of actually transitioning into their new positions.
We just don't have any exact dates yet," she said.

Team members outlined some of the challenges they face in the transformation
project. Many employees performing Staff Human Resources work in service
centers perform other functions, such as payroll and financial work,
as well as human resources work in support of student and academic employees.
This combination of work makes it difficult to assess just how many
people are needed to get the Staff Human Resources job done. "It
is not all strictly Staff HR," noted Hastings, adding that the
team is in the process of "unbundling" all these duties and
isolating the HR functions.

The transformation project will also involve writing new job descriptions,
said Willeen McQuitta, director of Staff Human Resources.

Another challenge is that the mission of the HR transformation team
has changed significantly since its work began. Originally directed
by the Executive Budget Committee to merge the service centers into
three human resources organizations--one each for administration, student
affairs, and academic divisions--the budget committee now wants UCSC
to have a single Staff Human Resources unit, dubbed the "supercenter"
by some at the forum. "The team really had to go back to the drawing
board," Christina Valentino, associate vice chancellor of business
and administrative services, explained after the forum.
The Executive Budget Committee has not set a target amount of savings
to be reached from the consolidation, team members told the audience.
"There will be cost savings, but we're still early in our thinking,"
said Hastings. "We're trying to provide the best model to provide
the best services."

Valentino noted that there was interest in reducing the number of service
centers even before the Executive Budget Committee process because of
the potential savings. "Intuitively, we think there is a more cost-effective
way to manage Human Resources," she said.

While many questions from the crowd of staff members were answered
with some variation of "we just don't know that, yet," the
team was more emphatic when asked about rumors that all employees will
be laid off and forced to reapply for open jobs. McQuitta said that
although the process to transition employees has not been developed,
a plan to lay off and rehire employees is not under consideration. "That
is not something that I would be interested in doing. We're trying to
preserve employment."

Team members said they welcome suggestions from staff members about
the transformation project and noted several online outlets for feedback.
The Executive Budget Committee has a confidential
online suggestion box and ideas may also be directed to any member
of the HR transformation committee, Assistant Provost Bill Hyder (bill@ucsc.edu),
or the Staff Human Resources Coordinators Group at shrc@ucsc.edu.
Members of the committee, in addition to McQuitta and Hastings, are
Lori Castro (Staff HR); Nancy Eder (Social Sciences); Susan Ford (Student
Affairs); Madlyn Norman-Terrance (School of Engineering); Julie Putnam
(Staff HR); Cher Roberts (Humanities); Joyce Ryan (Arts); Patti Hiramoto
(EEO/AA); Linda Listmann, Judith Martin-Hoyt (BAS/SHR); Scott Nostaja,
AVCOR consulting; Barbara Perman (BAS/SHR); and Dee Steele (CBO).

Advising is the topic of the next Staff Advisory Board forum, scheduled
for 2 to 3 p.m. in Thimann Lecture Hall 3 on April 21.